A coil component is an electronic component that may be used to remove noise from various electronic devices.
In recent years, as electronic products have become smaller, slimmer, and ever more multifunctional, a coil component which may be miniaturized and thinned while improving noise removal performance has been developed.
Increasing the volume occupied by the coil pattern enhances characteristics of the coil component such as inductance and direct current resistance.
Generally, the coil pattern is formed by a photoresist technique. In the case of forming a photoresist pattern, there is a limit to reducing a width of the photoresist pattern or an interval between adjacent photoresist patterns due to inherent limitations of the technique.
The coil pattern may be formed by forming a seed layer on a substrate, forming a conductive pattern using plating, and then etching the conductive pattern. In this case, to form the conductive pattern and then remove the seed layer, a wet etching method has been used. A change in a coil shape and a loss of electrical characteristics of the coil may occur during the etching process.
In detail, a cross section of the coil pattern after wet etching may be decreased in size by at least 1 μm in a width direction, as compared to that of the conductive pattern before wet etching. When the coil pattern is reduced in width, there is a limit to forming the coil pattern to have a micro line width equal to or less than 10 μm.
Therefore, it is important to use a manufacturing method capable of reducing changes in the coil shape and the loss of electrical characteristics of the coil, while forming the coil pattern to have a micro line width, and it is very important to obtain a coil component having low electrical resistance by securing the size of the coil pattern.
Meanwhile, a coil component having a plurality of coil patterns has increased loss in proportion to the reduction in the size of the coil pattern.